Cos jobs taken by FTrash lah!
<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR>Passion comes first for Gen Y
</TR><!-- headline one : end --><TR>Newly minted grads defy convention to choose unusual careers </TR><!-- Author --><TR><TD class="padlrt8 georgia11 darkgrey bold" colSpan=2>By Janice Heng
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Mass communications graduate Clarence Chua sells no ordinary fish tanks - the lifestyle products can cost up to $12,000. -- ST PHOTO: DESMOND FOO
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<!-- START OF : div id="storytext"--><!-- more than 4 paragraphs -->After the grind of lecture, lunch, loo and library, many a new graduate looks forward to that corporate nameplate.
But that's not for Mr Clarence Chua.
Five months ago, after sitting for his final-year exams at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), he was hooked by an invitation to 'take on the world' in a Park Mall store window's ad.
The 25-year-old, now a mass communications graduate, eagerly took the bait - to sell fish-tank furniture at local firm Michael Aquatic Design.
'Some people think fish tanks are dirty and smelly, but they can be a route to the glam life too,' Mr Chua said. Indeed, what he sells are no ordinary fish tanks but exotic 'lifestyle' products that can cost up to $12,000.
He is all fired up by his boss' plan to eventually set up shop overseas.
Mr Chua is among the coterie of mould breakers from the newly minted graduates who have hit the job market since the middle of last year. They defy convention and choose unusual careers from managing samba bands to venturing out on their own.
Of Singapore Management University's 711-strong class of 2007, some 3.5 per cent - or 21, up from 11 in 2006 - chose to be self-employed.
The rest went into finance, accounting and logistics, or other traditional areas like manufacturing and the media.
As for the National University of Singapore (NUS), its business school's latest survey found that almost 2 per cent of its 2007 business graduates started their own businesses.At NTU, the number of entrepreneurs among its graduates has increased threefold since 2004.
Many mould breakers have tasted the corporate culture and disliked it.
Mr Chua, for instance, did an internship with a financial journal. 'I just felt lost,' he said, recalling the hierarchy, layers of bureaucracy and lack of ownership of effort.
He now makes about $3,000 a month selling fish tanks, which he said is 'comparable' to what his peers earn in the corporate world.
Some experts suggest that such a dislike of the structured working environment is typical of Generation Y - those born between 1977 and 1999 and known to be tech- savvy, self-assured and fulfilment-seeking.
'Young and relatively unencumbered, they want to experiment with doing things that they have a strong interest in and which they have a skill for,' said NUS Associate Professor Ho Kong Chong.
The sociology professor noted that opportunities for experimentation are 'probably more prevalent now', partly because the transition into adulthood is much longer than in previous generations.
In contrast, Gen Y's baby-boomer parents, born between 1946 and 1963, are mostly career-conscious.
Many Gen Y-ers who opted out of the mould followed their passions and interests in their choice of work.
A teenage love of anime and manga led Mr Lai Weichang, 27, from NUS' class of 2008, to open an anime merchandise store, Mr Cosplay's Otaku House, at Suntec City mall. Anime and manga are Japanese cartoons and comics respectively.
Mr Lai, a physics graduate, said: 'To me, university was never just a means towards obtaining a degree...I think that one should be uncompromising in one's beliefs.'
His entrepreneurial drive has also been fuelled by his experience. In 2004, he was diagnosed with Ewing's sarcoma, a rare form of cancer which left him unable to walk for two months.
'I asked myself every day: 'What would I want to do if I was given a second chance?''
Since his recovery, apart from his anime and manga store, he has started a slew of businesses, including 20 umbrella vending machines islandwide, and an online tuition agency. He takes home about $3,000 a month and ploughs the rest into his businesses.
Another mould breaker, NTU graduate-turned-band manager Licia Sucipto, 24, said: 'I think that what's important is that I believe in what I'm doing.'
Like Mr Lai, her mass communications degree has never determined her career path, but is merely her 'back-up'.
She became the manager of local samba percussion troupe Wicked Aura Batucada in May last year, two months before graduating.
Unsurprisingly, parents often have to be won over.
Ms Sucipto said her parents, who used to own a construction hardware business, frowned on her 'improper' job which paid her an unsteady $1,000 or so a month.
To assuage them, she became an events manager at a media firm last November, earning over $3,000 a month there. But she quit last month when juggling two jobs proved tough, and is now negotiating a better salary with the band.
Mr Chua's lawyer father and counsellor mother too did not take well to his decision.
While he managed to talk his dad around, his mum worried that his job was 'less white-collar than what a degree promises'.
Are those who take the road less travelled rebels?
'I don't think it's rebellion but people will take it as that,' says Ms Sucipto. 'I just believe that it can do something for me as a person.'
But Mr Aaron Choy, of New York University's class of 2007, said that starting a business would have been 'completely impossible' without financial security.
Mr Choy, 25, whose father is a senior vice-president at ST Engineering and whose mother is a housewife, runs Cheeky Chocolates, a three-month-old chocolaterie and cafe in Thomson Road.
He said the self-confidence he acquired while overseas - and a dream - had egged him on.
He had a dream one night about selling chocolates. 'I felt passionate about something for the first time in my life,' he said. [email protected]
<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR>Passion comes first for Gen Y
</TR><!-- headline one : end --><TR>Newly minted grads defy convention to choose unusual careers </TR><!-- Author --><TR><TD class="padlrt8 georgia11 darkgrey bold" colSpan=2>By Janice Heng
</TD></TR><!-- show image if available --><TR vAlign=bottom><TD width=330>
</TD><TD width=10>
Mass communications graduate Clarence Chua sells no ordinary fish tanks - the lifestyle products can cost up to $12,000. -- ST PHOTO: DESMOND FOO
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
<!-- START OF : div id="storytext"--><!-- more than 4 paragraphs -->After the grind of lecture, lunch, loo and library, many a new graduate looks forward to that corporate nameplate.
But that's not for Mr Clarence Chua.
Five months ago, after sitting for his final-year exams at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), he was hooked by an invitation to 'take on the world' in a Park Mall store window's ad.
The 25-year-old, now a mass communications graduate, eagerly took the bait - to sell fish-tank furniture at local firm Michael Aquatic Design.
'Some people think fish tanks are dirty and smelly, but they can be a route to the glam life too,' Mr Chua said. Indeed, what he sells are no ordinary fish tanks but exotic 'lifestyle' products that can cost up to $12,000.
He is all fired up by his boss' plan to eventually set up shop overseas.
Mr Chua is among the coterie of mould breakers from the newly minted graduates who have hit the job market since the middle of last year. They defy convention and choose unusual careers from managing samba bands to venturing out on their own.
Of Singapore Management University's 711-strong class of 2007, some 3.5 per cent - or 21, up from 11 in 2006 - chose to be self-employed.
The rest went into finance, accounting and logistics, or other traditional areas like manufacturing and the media.
As for the National University of Singapore (NUS), its business school's latest survey found that almost 2 per cent of its 2007 business graduates started their own businesses.At NTU, the number of entrepreneurs among its graduates has increased threefold since 2004.
Many mould breakers have tasted the corporate culture and disliked it.
Mr Chua, for instance, did an internship with a financial journal. 'I just felt lost,' he said, recalling the hierarchy, layers of bureaucracy and lack of ownership of effort.
He now makes about $3,000 a month selling fish tanks, which he said is 'comparable' to what his peers earn in the corporate world.
Some experts suggest that such a dislike of the structured working environment is typical of Generation Y - those born between 1977 and 1999 and known to be tech- savvy, self-assured and fulfilment-seeking.
'Young and relatively unencumbered, they want to experiment with doing things that they have a strong interest in and which they have a skill for,' said NUS Associate Professor Ho Kong Chong.
The sociology professor noted that opportunities for experimentation are 'probably more prevalent now', partly because the transition into adulthood is much longer than in previous generations.
In contrast, Gen Y's baby-boomer parents, born between 1946 and 1963, are mostly career-conscious.
Many Gen Y-ers who opted out of the mould followed their passions and interests in their choice of work.
A teenage love of anime and manga led Mr Lai Weichang, 27, from NUS' class of 2008, to open an anime merchandise store, Mr Cosplay's Otaku House, at Suntec City mall. Anime and manga are Japanese cartoons and comics respectively.
Mr Lai, a physics graduate, said: 'To me, university was never just a means towards obtaining a degree...I think that one should be uncompromising in one's beliefs.'
His entrepreneurial drive has also been fuelled by his experience. In 2004, he was diagnosed with Ewing's sarcoma, a rare form of cancer which left him unable to walk for two months.
'I asked myself every day: 'What would I want to do if I was given a second chance?''
Since his recovery, apart from his anime and manga store, he has started a slew of businesses, including 20 umbrella vending machines islandwide, and an online tuition agency. He takes home about $3,000 a month and ploughs the rest into his businesses.
Another mould breaker, NTU graduate-turned-band manager Licia Sucipto, 24, said: 'I think that what's important is that I believe in what I'm doing.'
Like Mr Lai, her mass communications degree has never determined her career path, but is merely her 'back-up'.
She became the manager of local samba percussion troupe Wicked Aura Batucada in May last year, two months before graduating.
Unsurprisingly, parents often have to be won over.
Ms Sucipto said her parents, who used to own a construction hardware business, frowned on her 'improper' job which paid her an unsteady $1,000 or so a month.
To assuage them, she became an events manager at a media firm last November, earning over $3,000 a month there. But she quit last month when juggling two jobs proved tough, and is now negotiating a better salary with the band.
Mr Chua's lawyer father and counsellor mother too did not take well to his decision.
While he managed to talk his dad around, his mum worried that his job was 'less white-collar than what a degree promises'.
Are those who take the road less travelled rebels?
'I don't think it's rebellion but people will take it as that,' says Ms Sucipto. 'I just believe that it can do something for me as a person.'
But Mr Aaron Choy, of New York University's class of 2007, said that starting a business would have been 'completely impossible' without financial security.
Mr Choy, 25, whose father is a senior vice-president at ST Engineering and whose mother is a housewife, runs Cheeky Chocolates, a three-month-old chocolaterie and cafe in Thomson Road.
He said the self-confidence he acquired while overseas - and a dream - had egged him on.
He had a dream one night about selling chocolates. 'I felt passionate about something for the first time in my life,' he said. [email protected]
